Jesse’s Reviews > Tales of the Jazz Age > Status Update

“Jemina, the Mountain Girl”

Another briefly absurd comedy written as a tall tale, this one banking on the antics of Kentucky hillbillies.

“We will die together,” he said. “If we had lived I would have taken you to the city and married you. With your ability to hold liquor, your social success would have been assured.”

“Mr. Icky”

An absurd comedic sketch involving a rural Irish man. I think. Fitzgerald’s fake-play directions are completely off the rails here and indicate that quaint randomness has long been a mainstay of humor.

“(It will be noticed that some of the characters have not spoken for some time. It will improve the technique if they can be rendering a spirited saxophone number.)”

“The Lees of Happiness”

A Hallmark story about the Chorus girl and the short story author who marry and are passionately in love, and also Jeff is there and in an unhappy marriage, but then not-Fitzgerald has a stroke and declines swiftly at first and then slowly as his devoted wife cares for him. There isn’t a happy ending, just a bittersweet conclusion.

““O Russett Witch!””

A man named Merlin runs into a mysterious profligate woman as he ages from 25 to 65. It starts out with him viewing her through their windows, but she is such a libertine that she is chill with him when she kind of not really confronts him at the bookstore where he works. In a fit of spontaneity, the two of them wreck up the place, after which time…passes.

“Tarquin of Cheapside”

Historical fiction set in London in the 1600s. The opening action, with two men chasing a third, is beautifully written. At the end of the story, we are asked to believe that the quarry is a young William Shakespeare and that his long poem, “The Rape of Lucrece”, is actually a spontaneously-written BOAST, which reframes Shakespeare as a detestable villain.

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Most of this story is an absurd comedy. Benjamin is literally born a 70 year old man. He ages in reverse, and Fitzgerald hits on how Ben’s desires and his caregivers’ expectations clash with his apparent age.

BUT THEN.

The description of Benjamin from aging backward from about five to his end WRECKED ME. It wasn’t maudlin, it was simple and beautiful and I’m sad

“The Diamond As Big As the Ritz”

I expected, idk, some story about a ring with a large diamond. What I got was a screwball fantasy with a literal hotel-sized diamond via the wild excesses of the wealthy (and in this case southern) leg of George Washington’s descendants. This story’s tone whiplash after everything goes down, with the suddenly philosophical and worldly MC, is pretty jarring.

“Porcelain and Pink”

Posed as a scandalous sitcom sketch where one sister is playing irreverently in the bathtub while the other wants to clean up before her date. At some point, the date-night sister’s beau shows up and he holds a conversation with the bather, not knowing that it’s the other sister (the story lays on thick that he can see the upper walls through a thin window but nothing else).

“The Camel’s Back”

Parker loves Betty, and she loves him, but she doesn’t want to commit to a marriage. After the blow-up break-up, Parker gets drunk and decides to go to a circus-themed party. He ends up renting a camel costume, but he has to hire out his taxi driver as the back half. What ensues is for the most part charmingly madcap. The Camel in the Tate estate is my favorite part by far.

“The Jelly-Bean”

Set in the same town where “The Ice Palace” began, this is in Fitzgerald’s tradition of “boy can’t marry a girl because of money”. Jim has had a boyhood crush on Nancy since old times, but he settled into the lower class in the town with virtually zero aspirations to mask his poor self-esteem. Until he reconnects with Nancy at a party, that is.